Pass rate
Around average — 1.6 pts ahead of the 82.1% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 44,802 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £29–£83
Pass rate
Around average — 1.6 pts ahead of the 82.1% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 44,802 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £29–£83
Most common fault
Suspension
31.9% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Part only £35–£75 for Suspension pin or bush excessively worn. What fitting it takes →
4.1 pts up across model years — 0.6% in 2000, 4.7% in 2022.
Which year to buy
Across the 24 years on record, a spread of 24.4 points. See every year →
The 2015 Nissan Micra MOT pass rate is 83.7% of its MOT tests — 1.6 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 31.9% of what testers record.
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how Nissan Micra does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Suspension accounts for 31.9% of everything recorded on the 2015 Nissan Micra, against 21.0% nationally — 10.9 points above. Ask for the front and rear suspension to be checked on a ramp before you buy — worn bushes and broken springs are cheap to look at and expensive to discover at test time.
Written from this page's own figures: fault shares against the national composition, the like-for-like pass rate, and the priced repair list. How these are worked out
Watching a Nissan Micra? Get an email when these numbers change .
Every Nissan Micra first registered in 2015 is combined here — 2 trim and body variants in total — so the sample is as large as the DVSA data allows.
Cars of this age and mileage average 82.1%, so this figure is 1.6 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 80.8%. The median 2015 Nissan Micra in this dataset had covered 40,856 mi.
Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 83.7% of the time, April–September 83.8%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Service brake performance excessively binding", noted on 3.48% of tests.
Figures count every completed test on this vehicle-year in the dataset, including retests. See methodology for the exact definition.
Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.
Brake Servicing
Typically a garage job — get quotes before committing.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 65% so small gaps stay visible.
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 8,483 | 86.0% |
| North West | 6,989 | 84.2% |
| East of England | 4,749 | 86.5% |
| South West | 4,410 | 81.7% |
| West Midlands | 3,848 | 84.7% |
| Yorkshire | 3,686 | 81.7% |
| Scotland | 3,132 | 77.9% |
| North East | 2,753 | 81.7% |
| London | 2,340 | 87.6% |
| East Midlands | 2,305 | 82.8% |
| Wales | 2,107 | 81.0% |
Regions come from the postcode area recorded at the test station. Areas on region borders are assigned to the region with the majority of their population.
Everything a tester recorded on this vehicle, grouped into the inspection sections that produced it. The notch on each bar is the national share, so you can see at a glance whether this car is unusual or just ordinary.
A test can record several items, so these percentages do not add up to 100%. The exact strings, with prices, are in the full DVSA record at the bottom of this page.
Before your test
These are not generic tips — they are the faults recorded most often on this exact model, rewritten as things you can check yourself. All three take about ten minutes and cost nothing.
Check the suspension joints 3.0% of tests
“pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn”
With the car parked on level ground, rock the top of each front wheel in and out while someone watches the suspension arm. Clunks, or rubber boots split and greasy, are what testers record here.
Check the wipers and washers 2.2% of tests
“wipers blade defective”
Run the wipers with the screen wet: they should clear it in one sweep without smearing or juddering. Top the washer bottle up and check both jets hit the screen.
Check the windscreen 1.2% of tests
“windscreen damaged”
Check the driver’s side of the screen within the swept area for chips and cracks; anything larger than 10mm in the driver’s central view is a fail. Most chips can be resin-repaired for far less than a new screen.
Shares are the proportion of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item, so they overlap: one test can record several.
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £29–£83 — and 47% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 44,802 MOT tests on this vehicle. They exclude diagnostics, retest fees and garage labour where the part is a DIY fit, and they are not figures from the DVSA dataset. Older and higher-mileage examples cost more than the average. How these estimates are built → · All MOT repair costs → · Cheapest cars to put through a test →
24 model years on record, from 2000 to 2023. Across them the pass rate runs from 69.4% to 93.8% — a spread of 24.4 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.
Colour is the pass rate on a fixed scale, so a block means the same thing on any model. Each year links to its own page with the full fault breakdown.
The raw pass rate mostly measures age. The year comparison adds the like-for-like figure, the mileage bands and the repair bill.
Closest pass rates among 2015 cars with at least 2,000 tests, so a small sample cannot flatter itself into the list. See the full rankings: best and worst MOT pass rates.
Shares of the 66,674 individual items recorded on this vehicle, and the same share across all cars nationally. A single test can record several items, so a row is not a percentage of tests.
| Category | Items | This car | Nationally | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suspension | 21,384 | 31.90% | 20.98% | +10.92 |
| Brakes | 15,856 | 23.70% | 20.89% | +2.81 |
| Tyres | 14,740 | 22.00% | 19.76% | +2.24 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 5,164 | 7.70% | 12.21% | −4.51 |
| Visibility | 3,991 | 6.00% | 4.97% | +1.03 |
| Non-component advisories | 1,994 | 3.00% | 4.18% | −1.18 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 1,739 | 2.60% | 5.52% | −2.92 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 1,039 | 1.60% | 5.57% | −3.97 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 542 | 0.80% | 1.76% | −0.96 |
| Road Wheels | 225 | 0.30% | 0.75% | −0.45 |
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service brake performance excessively binding Brakes | Major | 3.5% | £60–150 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Major | 3.0% | £40–150 |
| Wipers blade defective Visibility | Minor | 2.2% | £8–22 |
| Wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively Visibility | Major | 1.9% | £8–22 |
| Ball joint excessively worn Suspension | Major | 1.6% | £18–45 |
| Wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively Visibility | Rectified | 1.4% | £8–22 |
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 1.2% | £80–200 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of a single lamp or all lamps Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 1.0% | £5–20 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 0.91% | £5–25 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 0.88% | £5–25 |
Severity is as recorded: Major and Dangerous fail the test outright; Minor and Advisory do not. Costs are estimates from typical UK parts prices — see how they are built.
Advisories are the early warnings — the same parts a year or two before they fail. Reading them is how you tell a car that has been maintained from one that has been patched.
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 20.9% | £40–150 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 14.9% | £45–95 |
| Coil spring corroded so that its cross sectional area is reduced and seriously weakened Suspension | Advisory | 13.2% | £25–65 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Advisory | 11.7% | £45–95 |
| Service brake performance excessively binding Brakes | Advisory | 6.0% | £60–150 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 5.6% | £45–110 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 13,632 | 88.4% | 20,515 mi |
| 30-60k | 20,700 | 83.5% | 43,630 mi |
| 60-90k | 8,132 | 79.3% | 71,591 mi |
| 90-120k | 1,871 | 74.7% | 100,895 mi |
| 120k+ | 457 | 73.1% | 139,142 mi |
Source: 44,802 recorded tests on this vehicle-year. Every row above is recomputed from the same DVSA extract as the rest of the page — see the methodology.
83.7% of the 44,802 2015 Nissan Micra tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 82.1% for cars first used in 2015. First-attempt pass rate: 80.8%.
The three most recorded items are service brake performance excessively binding (3.48%), pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn (2.98%), wipers blade defective (2.20%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 88.4% of the time, falling to 73.1% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2015 Nissan Micra in this dataset had covered 40,856 mi.
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 83.7% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 83.8%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.